Yusuf couldn’t have heard her, with the way he leaned into me, sucking in air and blinking away the sparks in his eyes. The unknown metal of the machine sizzled under my palms when I connected to it again, each time easier than before. Like a muscle I was learning to flex. Each time, the wispy threads that I could almost touch felt more solid.

“I have no idea what you mean,” I said.

I shoved away from the machine, flung Yusuf’s arm over my neck and half-carried him back to the room.

*   *   *

Alright, I may have had some idea of what she meant.

Yusuf slumped down on the bed and I followed him, giving in to the doubt for a few minutes, the thoughts that followed me since I’d watched the footage of Tiago’s death and when Kaori had told me about the plague. Each knock on the door of this tiny room brought with it a new apocalypse that cemented my doubt. All of this was my fault. By saving Yusuf, somehow, I’d messed up what was supposed to happen. I’d jammed my thumb in the big multiverse loom, knotting-up and snapping threads, the shockwaves reaching out farther than I could ever imagine. Figueiredo obviously didn’t care about any other reality except for his own, with the way he mailed Envisioners off, to hell with the consequences.

Maybe we were more alike than I wanted to admit.

Kaori’s words just confirmed everything. Tell him or I will. At least let him be the one to make the choice. All this was happening because I wouldn’t let him go. So why didn’t she just kill him and spare us this torture?

Unless she didn’t know everything and wasn’t as smart as she thought. Either way, no chance that I was just going to let him die.

Each time she dragged us into the Theater she was giving me another chance to learn how to connect to the faceted box. The nonverbal commands flowing out of my head, down my arms, and into the machine, like with a scratch between the ears I could get it to do whatever I wanted. Sit, stay. Heel. How to connect our Envisioner to another universe where Figueiredo had also shoved an Envisioner, with the machines linked and calling out to each other. Everything was connected—Yusuf was right.

The other universes were strings I could feel each time I touched the Envisioner. Each with a certain tension, like they’d give off different notes if I plucked them, with different colors that I could practically taste in some sensory mashup. And whatever fabric the universes were made of—whatever barrier separated them felt flimsy, almost like I could punch through if I tried hard enough. All these things I was beginning to feel even though I’d probably never really be able to understand.